Month: November 2015

We live in the Texas Hill Country above San Antonio near the small town of Sisterdale.  Beekeeping for us is a continual learning experience.

We are members of the Texas Beekeepers Association and that connection has brought us beekeeping friends from all over the state.  The state convention is in the Fall and is a terrific opportunity to learn and share ideas.

Lolita is a past board member of the Alamo Area Beekeepers and Joe is the leader of the Fredericksburg Area Beekeepers.  For us, there is value in the presentations we hear at these meetings, but the real nuggets of knowledge usually come from the conversations with other beekeepers before or after a meeting.

We are both in the Texas Master Beekeeping program.  It is a multi year study program offered by the Texas Apiary Inspection Service.  The program is fun, but it is also a lot of work and the testing is challenging.

We have hives near our home and we also have hives above Austin.

We are business owners and work full time ‘plus’ at our primary enterprises. Beekeeping is our passion.

Bee Ag Exemption     Honeybee Leasing and Management

The name of this website comes from watching bees work.

My wife and I find a great peace as we see these wonderful creatures flying in and out of their hives gathering nectar and pollen.  They make a quiet humming as they fly by and in the morning there is a sweet wax smell that emanates from their homes as they emerge on their way to find flowers.  When sage is in bloom here in the Texas Hill Country, the bees gather around the bushes in an aerial dance moving from blossom to blossom in something that almost resembles a square dance.

Bees work as a fascinating team.  Workers or field bees bring in nectar in their honey crop and pollen in special baskets on their hind legs.  They enter the hive and immediately pass their bounty off to nurse bees that take the nectar and refine it into honey and store it in wax comb.  Young bees have the ability to secrete small plates of white wax which are then constructed in an exact and very efficient comb to store the honey.  Other bees are taking pollen from the returning workers and making bee bread from a honey and pollen mixture.  They pack this colorful pollen mix into the comb often creating a rainbow of color.  Still other bees are tending to the queen.  There is always a cluster of nurse bees that feed and care for the queen of the hive.  The queen’s retinue is also responsible for carrying her scent throughout the hive.  As long as the bees in the hive can smell the queen, they know everything is right in their world.  The queen’s job is to lay eggs.  A good queen can lay 2000 eggs per day and as many as one million in her lifetime.

One more intriguing thing about bees is how they communicate about a food source.  When a field bee finds a source of nectar or pollen it enters the hive and does a dance for the other field bees.  The dance is called a waggle dance and moves in a figure eight pattern on the wax comb.  By the pattern in the dance and the position of the sun the bees watching the dance can fly almost directly to the nectar source as far as three miles away.

Observing all of these things brings us joy and peace.  It does not get much better than that.  Bee peaceful.

Lolita and Joe Bader

About this website

One of our primary focuses is on ag exemption for beekeepers in Texas.  We have been studying Texas law, the ag appraisers manual and the appraisal districts valuation on beekeeping land for several years.  There are different  classifications and values for different types of land.  Beekeeping land is often the highest valued and highest taxed.  We have several suggestions on how to lower your property taxes on beekeeping land.

Thanks for visiting us!

Farm Address:

BeePeaceful Colony Management
138 Siebeneicher Rd.
Boerne, TX 78006